Mohsen Makhmalbaf is the most prominent Iranian figure to visit Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

One of Iran's most famous film-makers, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a former revolutionary who spent four years in jail under the late shah's rule, has made headlines again after breaking a taboo by visiting Israel.

Makhmalbaf, who was invited by the Jerusalem film festival, said he went as "an ambassador for peace" to promote Iranian art in a country that has previously threatened to launch a pre-emptive strike against his homeland. His visit last week has stirred a heated debate among Iranians.

"I went there to take a message of peace," he told the Guardian. "I try to unite people through arts, I am citizen of cinema, and cinema has no border, and in fact before my journey to Israel my film travelled to that country many years before."

Makhmalbaf, a leading figure in Iranian cinema's new wave movement, is the most prominent Iranian figure to visit Israel since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Iranian passports are not valid for travel to Israel and those visiting the country risk a jail sentence of at least five years under Iranian law.

The 57-year-old director lives in exile in London. He left Iran after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, and has since become an outspoken critic of the Islamic republic. In 2009 he became active in support of the opposition Green movement.

"I am one of the ambassadors for Iranian art to Israel and my message was of peace and friendship," he said. "When I flew to Israel last week, I felt like a man flying to another planet, like a man flying to the moon, because it was not very ordinary since I had officially and publicly announced that I will be in Israel as an Iranian artist."

Makhmalbaf, director of the award-winning 2001 film Kandahar, which is in the Time magazine's list of the 100 greatest films, screened his latest work, The Gardener, at the festival. It is a docudrama about a son and a father talking about religion, especially the Baha'i faith, which Makhmalbaf made in collaboration with his son Maysam.

He said he was overwhelmed by the welcome he received in Israel. "There was an amazing reaction, they showed The Gardener three times and each time the theatre was full and hundreds of people queuing up outside who wanted to come in," he said. "They clapped for so long. And I asked them if you are so much interested in our art, why is that your government is going to attack us?"

A group of Iranian intellectuals, among them opposition figures, said in a joint letter that they were "deeply dismayed" at Makhmalbaf's decision to visit a country with "apartheid" policies. They expressed regret that he had not joined a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BSD) campaign against Israel.

"We are deeply concerned that an artist so attuned to the brutalities of state violence in his homeland would have absolute disregard for the nonviolent global BDS movement and its work to peacefully pressure the Israeli state to respect Palestinian human rights," read the letter.

The director of Iran's cinema organisation, Javad Shamaghdari, ordered the country's film museum to remove its section dedicated to Makhmalbaf and his awards. "It is appropriate in this month [Ramadan], the last Friday of which will witness demonstrations by millions of Muslims against the Zionists, that the Film Museum of Iran is cleansed of the filmmaker's memorabilia," Shamaghdari said, according to the Tehran Times.

Ali Alizadeh, an Iranian political analyst based in London, said Makhmalbaf's visit might help the Palestinian cause. Demonising Iranhad helped Israel to distract attention from its Palestinian issue and illegal settlements, he said.

"Ahmadinejad's flirtation with antisemitism was the best imagined gift to Israeli hardliners," he said. "If his [Makhmalbaf's] trip has helped to humanise the image of Iran and Iranians, it has inadvertently been beneficial to Palestinians."

Makhmalbaf described the taboo against visiting Israel as a "cancer" looming over Iran's intellectual community for over 60 years. He said he respected the British scientist Stephen Hawking for his decision to boycott an Israeli conference this year, but it was not a decision he would have made.

"If I make a film in Iran and you come to my country to watch it, does it mean you confirm dictatorship in Iran and you have no respect for political prisoners in Iran? If you go to the US, does it mean you confirm their attack on Afghanistan and Iraq?" Makhmalbaf said it was this mentality that allowed him to head the jury of the Moscow film festival last week in spite of his opposition to Vladimir Putin's support for the Syrian regime.

"I already need a visa to go to Israel, why should be another barrier? A cultural visa?" he asked. "Almost two million Palestinian and Arab people live in Israel, why should I not go there? If Palestinians and Israelis are trying to solve their problem by diplomacy, why we should insist that they fight with each other?"

Makhmalbaf's 1996 film Gabbeh, about Iran's nomadic tribes, was the first Iranian film to be screened in Israel commercially. "I travelled to Israel 18 years ago, not by myself, by sending my film Gabbeh to Israel," he said. "I sent that film to change the mind of Israelis about the dark image of Iranian people that they had in their mind and I faced problems in Iran for that. I was attacked by the media and the police questioned me."

In his speech at last week's festival, Makhmalbaf, dedicated his prize to all the people who struggled for peace between Iran, Israel and Palestine. "We, the Iranian intellectuals, are divided into two groups. Of course, both groups yearn for peace. But one group, apart from yearning, struggles for it as well. The other group is sitting, waiting for Israel to attack, and then issue statements condemning Israel. Why not light a candle rather than curse the darkness," he said.

The election of Hassan Rouhani as Ahmadinejad's successor last month has raised hopes in Iran for change, but in an interview this week Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, described the Iranian president-elect as a "wolf in sheep's clothing". Rouhani will take office in August.